5 Min Read Influencer marketing has taken the world by storm in the past few years, and for good reason.
Whether it’s Kim Kardashian leveraging famous brands to build her own business empire, Marques Brownlee disrupting the world of tech with his reviews and opinions or the ever-growing batallion of micro-influencers creating waves around the world, influencer marketing is here and it’s here to stay!
If you haven’t harnessed the power of influencers for your brand or business yet, now’s the time to try it. You might think ‘influencers just don’t suit my product’ but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Influencers are successful because they operate within very specific niches, and whatever your product is, there will be an influencer that can help you elevate your business in that same niche.
Not convinced? Read on and you’ll find out exactly what influencer marketing entails, why it’s important and how you can integrate it into your marketing strategy effectively.
What is Influencer Marketing?
Essentially, influencer marketing should be one of the many strings in your marketing strategy.
Much like word of mouth, but on a much larger scale, influencer marketing leverages relationships between well known or respected figures within particular sectors and their followers, allowing brands and businesses to connect with a highly targeted audience that is interested in your product or service.
Ever been endlessly scrolling on Instagram and seen a footballer advertising a brand new razor? That’s influencer marketing. Ever noticed a product from a brand you love start to pop up on your feed across multiple accounts that you follow in a short period of time? It’s probably influencer marketing.
You get the idea.
Influencers are everywhere and they can be used by your business to get your products and services in front of a captive audience quickly and more importantly, said audience will already trust the opinion of that influencer, instilling trust in your product immediately as a result.
Why is Influencer Marketing effective?
There are lots of reasons that influencer marketing is so effective, but in our experience as an agency, we’ve found influencers to be a great addition to marketing strategies because they provide an emotional connection between your product and the audience you want to engage with.
People who follow influencers and respect their opinions are aspirational, they want what an influencer has, they want a taste of the life that influencer leads and even if they haven’t heard of your product or business before, they will remember you if they see you’re affiliated with an influencer they love.
Highly targeted marketing
One of the key reasons we recommend influencer marketing to our clients is the fact it provides an effective way to reach a highly targeted audience. This means that you’re not having to spend large amounts of your budget on ads that may not be valuable to your audience.
Speaking of budgets, many influencers operate on a product for service offering, meaning you can gift your product to them in exchange for content and exposure on their social media channels. It’s a great scalable way to kickstart your marketing efforts if you’re running on a tight budget.
How to Find the Right Influencers for your Brand
We’re speaking from experience when we say it can be difficult to find the right influencer for your brand. But don’t worry we can take the hard work out of the process for you. Having worked with influencers across a wide range of sectors, we can match your business with the right influencer and enable you to hit the ground running.
However, if you’re looking to go it alone, here are our top tips.
Don’t go big or you might be going home!
Resist the temptation to go for the influencers with the big followings when you are first starting out, they will cost a lot and prices can vary wildly. Many of these larger influencers also have global fanbases, which isn’t particularly useful if you are only marketing a specific product that is only available in a specific country. Don’t think too small though, you still want a blogger or content creator that has a large enough following to give you the exposure you’re looking for.
Scan social media
Another great way to get started is to tap into social media channels. Search for influencers based on keywords and see who keeps appearing at the top of each list, whether it be on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok or Facebook.
Stay in your niche and do your background checks
Finally, (and we cannot recommend this enough) stay in your niche. Don’t be fooled by influencers offering a great price for their services. Just because they have a large number of followers and they’re offering a low cost per piece of content shared, doesn’t mean they’re right for you.
Make sure you get accurate stats and reports from them before making a transaction, things to look out for include;
- Where is the bulk of their followers from?
- What is their engagement rate?
- How often do they post non-ad content?
- Who have they worked with in the past?
- Can you work with them across multiple platforms?
Want an easy way to start marketing using influencers?
If all that research sounds like too much work, don’t worry, we can take the stress out of the situation for you. As we’ve mentioned we have great relationships with influencers in a range of sectors that we can activate for your brand.
We can also make sure that the influencer campaigns complement your wider marketing strategy. When we work with businesses we really get to know them, we like to think of ourselves as a partner to your business, not just a service provider.
If that sounds good to you, then let’s get the ball rolling and get your brand, product and services in front of active audiences!
It can happen much sooner than you think!
Want to know more? Check out our services page by clicking here.
